Posted on 02/20/2010 2:50:34 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
What will it profit you to be a citizen of a free country, so long as your soul is not free?
What is the good of living in a free land like ours, with free thought, free speech, free action, free conscience, so long as you are a slave to sin, and a captive to the devil? Yes: there are tyrants whom no eye can see, as real and destructive as Pharaoh or Nero!
There are chains which no hands can touch, as true and heavy and soul-withering as ever crushed the limbs of a slave! It is these tyrants whom I want you to remember today. It is these chains from which I want you to be free. By all means value your earthly liberty, but do not overvalue it. Look higher, further than any earthly freedom. In the highest sense let us ensure that we are free indeed.
"The freedom I speak of is a freedom that is within the reach of every child of Adam who is willing to receive it. No power on earth can prevent a man or woman from receiving it, if they have but the will to receive it. Tyrants may threaten and cast in prison, but nothing they can do can stop a person from receiving this liberty. And, once it is ours, nothing can take it away. Now, what is this glorious freedom? Where is it to be found? What is it like? Who has obtained it for us? Who has got it at this moment to bestow? I ask you to give me your attention, and I will supply a simple answer to these questions.
(Excerpt) Read more at biblebb.com ...
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. ~ John 8:36
Then you replied ...
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream.
It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same,
or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children
and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."
President Ronald Reagan
That's two completely different kinds of "free"... that is being spoken about here. The one you're talking about is temporal and is what the Bible would refer to as very transitory. It has no permanence and never will.
What the Bible talks about is a freedom that is permanent and never goes away and that one will have forever...
The Bible's is the three-fold freedom of the (1) freedom from the penalty of sin, (2) from the power of sin, and then finally (3) freedom from the presence of sin.
That's freedom that no one can attain by the words of Ronald Reagan.
One can only attain that kind of freedom from the Words of the Bible, per the Gospel of Salvation by way of Jesus the Messiah of Israel.
One should never confuse the two.
Amen. That is the distinction.
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